I'm A Proud Conservative

At some point, you just have to concede that you're in the minority:

the president has won himself some daylight on the issue of warrantless wiretaps; 56 percent now call them justified.

This depresses me.

At the moment, I'm in the midst of an amusing argument with "A. Acacia" over at Libertas. I try to stay clear-eyed and cool-headed, but my greatest failing as a human being is probably my continued irritation over sanctimonious assholes, and the need to confront them. In the midst of our little back-and-forth it occured to me: Aren't I a conservative now?

After all, I'm a proponent of smaller government. I believe that the United States should stay out of the private lives of its citizens. I think that spending trillions of dollars wastefully is a bad thing. I oppose the idea of Crusade, and think money spent at home is money better spent.

Sounds pretty...well, conservative to me. And people like Acacia, with their crippling fear and their need for a figurative Mother to tuck them in at night and tell them everything will be alright (if they just believe!)? Well...they sound pretty liberal to me.

And we all know what shiftless cowards those liberals are, don't we?

When did "Conservatism" become synoymous with big-spending, sprawling government? When did the party of fiscal frugality embrace the 21st century-equivalent of FDR's New Deal? Was there a meeting? Did I miss the meeting?

On the issue of warrantless wiretaps, amazingly, I'm in the minority. I'll get taken out by some lunatic radical and have my Freedom loving US of A avenge my death with righteous fury before I mewl like a kicked kitten and curl myself around the heel of someone who offered to protect me - if I'll only just give up the pretense of privacy.

Who knew that when Patrick Henry uttered his immortal words, "Give me liberty, or give me death," what he meant was "Give me security, or give me death"?